


A Reason to Parade On

by wintercreek



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M, Yahtzee's Star Trek Drabblefests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-12
Updated: 2009-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:11:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintercreek/pseuds/wintercreek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James Kirk has spent his whole life outrunning the truth that he'll never be good enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Reason to Parade On

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: _56\. Kirk/McCoy, failings_, for the Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challege #3.

James Kirk has spent his whole life outrunning the truth that he'll never be good enough. It doesn't matter that he can ace any test, hack any computer, toe the line for any prick with power over him. Since the moment he was born, Jim has never been good enough for other people, _with_ other people.

He wasn't enough for his mother after his father died - she could hardly look at him, this boy she'd trade in a heartbeat to get her husband back. And toeing the line wasn't ever enough for his stepfather, neither of them. There was no way Jim could keep himself just right, always something that needed to be beat out of him.

It was easy, after that, to see everyone else in his adolescence as the same. And easier to start failing people before they had a chance to develop real expectations for him. Guidance counselor said he had great potential, based on his aptitude tests, so Jim started cutting class and wouldn't give anything more than apathy to discussions of his "future." Girlfriend seemed to think he was a good, solid guy, so he cut and run one night. That one guy wanted to be boyfriends; Jim made sure that ended before it ever got started.

By the time he's 22, Jim has made a career out of screwing up his own life - the only expectation he consistently meets. It is maybe ironic that just after he's failed at getting his nose broken in a bar fight that someone challenges Jim to succeed in a way that compels him to try. Pike makes Jim want it, the academic and professional success that's hovered just out of reach. It seems okay to risk something on Starfleet, as long as he keeps his personal life simple, low-stakes.

And so Jim does what he's always done, sleeps with the pretty people who catch his eye and sneaks out in the morning well before breakfast. He can't possibly be the man they want. He still doesn't have many friends, for the same reasons. In fact, Jim has one friend.

James Kirk met Leonard McCoy in a crowded shuttle craft over a flask of too-strong whiskey. Jim was still wearing his bloody shirt from his last bar fight; Bones was drunk and phobic, a winning combination. Jim thought that accepting alcohol from a stranger who was obviously at rock-bottom was a great way to start failing to meet expectations, so he went with it. Bones threw up on Jim's shoes halfway through the flight and then slept on Jim's mercifully still-clean lap the rest of the way.

And so they're friends, a bond forged from panic and desperation and open-handed unwilling reaching for _something_ turned into the kind of friendship that carries them both beyond the worst times with the knowledge that someone will still be there on the other side. Bones stands by Jim as he fails the Kobyashi Maru and as he cheats at it; Bones knows that these actions are two sides of the same coin, and he somehow doesn't care. Jim offers Bones a drink after his ex-wife tells him that he gets visitation rights to their daughter once a year; Jim takes the bourbon away and won't let Bones make any calls until he stops looking wild-eyed.

When Jim makes captain, he gets the ship on course and then excuses himself to his quarters for a private freak-out. There are _four hundred_ people he could let down at any moment, and it could cost some of them their lives when he fails to be good enough. He's got his head in his hands, hyperventilating there in the dark, when Bones shows up.

Oddly, Bones does not have liquor with him. He doesn't say anything, either, just puts a quiet hand on the back of Jim's neck and waits.

Jim looks up and Bones tells him everything they say at Starfleet Medical, everything that can be learned in even just a few years of being a country doctor: that you cannot save everyone, you cannot please everyone, you will doubt yourself and hate yourself some days. That Jim is hardly alone in his response to the power and expectation laid upon him.

Misery shared is not necessarily misery halved, and it shows on Jim's face. So the next words out of Bones's mouth are promises that Jim does not let Bones down, testimonials that he has not yet and surety that he never will.

Jim stands and kisses Bones, certain that he's about to fuck this up in the surest way he knows. Bones returns his kisses, then draws back to look at him and says, "If you run away from me, I'll find you. You can't possibly fail me, Jim. I won't allow it."

It's the truth. Jim clings to those words in that moment and in countless moments to follow. When the _Enterprise_ is too late to stop a disaster, when a shuttle craft explodes and two ensigns are killed, every time a security officer doesn't make it back from an away mission: Bones finds him. They don't always do anything on those nights - sometimes they sleep side-by-side - but often they have sex in the worst ways Jim knows, hard and fast and not loving at all. If Jim sneaks out in the morning and doesn't leave a note, if he leaves when Bones walks into the Mess, it doesn't matter. Bones is still there that evening, reading in Jim's favorite chair and lifting one unimpressed eyebrow. Jim learns that these nights, the ones after the nights after, are the best times for slow careful love-making and confessions whispered into the dark, secrets traded for secrets and fears for fears.

Jim has never been able to disappoint Bones, not even when he's tried. And it is finally, finally enough.


End file.
